warriorscribe | Snowblind Inbox

[He suspects bitterness, given the way he's gotten his real emotions to crack through during this conversation. He responds, calm and gentle:]

You were raised as a human. You've never told me what you are - you certainly look like one - but perhaps you should listen more closely, to the things I define as "human". It's a perspective, it sets us apart from those who never lived as we did.

...Whatever runs through your veins, living as a human is what originally shaped you as a person. It's how you learned right from wrong, and the way the world works.

Celestial. My dad wasn't even originally even remotely humanoid, he just made himself an avatar to interact with everyone else. He was a planet, otherwise. So you can see how piddly everyone seems to a planet.

[He had managed to convince himself that being a Celestial was better, but there was something disconcerting about it that's never left him, after all these years.]

So he could look like humans, but he never quite got their perspective. Mortals were nothing to him, he was disappointed by life. He lived for millions of years, regular people's lives were like...flies to him.

I might've been raised human. But ordinary people's versions of right from wrong doesn't apply to Celestials. Dealing with literal eternity.

Edited 2018-01-09 14:54 (UTC)

And that's where you're wrong. Right and wrong - especially in the context of doing right or wrong by someone else, it's not about relative significance. It's about the moment itself. Immortals are not above it, no matter how much the older ones like to think they are.

[Peter's quiet a moment.]

He was disappointed by...other life. I think he was always bothered with how short everyone's lifespans were. Never being able to make friends that lasted long enough to mean anything. He couldn't connect with anyone, in all those years. He never saw them as actual people, didn't care about anyone else.

[He didn't connect with anyone...except for Meredith Quill. And look what he did to her in the end.]

He thought he was above normal right and wrong. He taught me to forget about the mortal in me. To look at things in the context of eternity.

Edited 2018-01-17 14:47 (UTC)

And yet, look at the way mortal humans evolve, look at the way they pass their knowledge on. Look at the good they do for one another, at what they can accomplish - if you want the true context of eternity, it is that humans have boundless potential, and the ability to build on the knowledge of those who have passed on is its key.

[And that's something Ego never really could understand, even if he stumbled around the edges of it, with his appreciation (if he wasn't lying, that was) for earth's music and most of all, for Meredith Quill.

Peter sighed.]

...yeah, well. Not much luck getting any of that here, what with all the repeats.

I would argue that they still benefit from their predecessors. I could swear the House we have now is more calculating with his recklessness than the first. Of course, that's difficult to tell now, given the town has forced the wrong versions' brain maps on all of them...

[Norfinbury, why do you do this.]

Yeah, in a weird, roundabout way.

I hate this town so much.

[A slight reveal of empathy there, the caring he was trying to hide breaking through. It was heartbreaking what this town was doing to the different versions of them.]

I had hoped...I'd hoped that at least these people would be spared the horrors of our earlier days here.

[The Rhys he was traveling with didn't deserve to suffer what the first had...]

This place is awful. It's why- it's as I was saying, all along. They deserve better than this.

[Peter can't admit it out loud. Doesn't want to admit it out loud. But Enoch is so right.

Those poor people.

But then...]

We deserve better than this. What this town is doing, bringing them back. They're not gonna remember being repeated. We see it. People who are... [Say it.] Who were close to us. It's like the town is teasing us.

Edited 2018-01-21 13:28 (UTC)

Maybe...maybe it knows who is best for it. Maybe it will be one of them who finally breaks through, with the incentive of their lifespan, with their fresher perspective. And we, those of us who can't die, we have all the knowledge collected before to guide them.

We all deserve better. But maybe the way it is, maybe that will, one of these centuries, prove to be the way out. Our session had all the tools it needed to begin with - all the right minds that come together in all the right ways. We just need to find the right combination of ideas and motivation.

...I hope.

[It's the only way any of this will be worth it.]

You really think so?

[He's too old, too jaded to even dare to allow himself to hope again.

And yet...

And yet it's...it's something.

It could be nothing, but...]

What if that takes a million years?

Then it takes a million years. As long as the system sustains us, we can keep trying. If need be, we can help preserve the knowledge the newcomers need.

It isn't a pleasant prospect. I don't want it to go on this long for any of us But if that's what it will take, then I would rather try to do my part to ensure it doesn't take even longer.

No, it's not.

[It wasn't a pleasant prospect at all. The idea that this could go on for that long, or longer, or simply forever...that was terrifying. But if it took a bazillion years for them to eventually get the combination right, to stop this, to stop the town from taking...them over and over again, well. What other choice did he have? And this could be a way out. Even though he'd stopped believing in a way out. Dare he believe in this?]

That's not much to go on. Hoping, I mean. Maybe we missed our shot and this whole system is glitched out. Takin' people over and over again.

We've seen what happens when a session misses their chance, and this isn't it.

Giving up is the only way to absolutely guarantee we lose. If hope is all we have, then we shouldn't squander it.

[There's a pang of something like mourning when he says it. He'd said something similar to Beckett, a long time ago, when the vampire had been struggling with giving up, himself.

He hadn't had a chance to say anything last time, and he'd just...slipped away, into the beast. Thinking too hard about it, it almost makes him feel like he should think of giving up too. But he's not gone, is he?

Neither are they.]

If we lose hope, we lose the ability to help them, and one another, and consequently ourselves.

[Giving up is the only way to absolutely guarantee we lose.

That really hits home. As cynical as he was, as hopeless as he was, the thought of this place winning was even worse.]

This is shaping up to be quite the session. [That's said dryly.] Maybe the system just likes us.

I...want to hope. [It's reluctantly said.] But I've been disappointed so many times. There's nothing to go on except just...what we think might happen.

I know. But holding on to whatever hope we can is the least we can do. Even if it doesn't look like it, even if the only hope is to survive to the next day.

Hold on. It's all anyone can ask of you - hold on, and try to help others do so when you can.

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